Tell Me About It: Friend needs to tell truth to melodramatic pal

Dear Carolyn: My best friend recently started dating someone, and it's her first serious relationship. (We're both in our late 20s.)

Dear Carolyn: My best friend recently started dating someone, and it’s her first serious relationship. (We’re both in our late 20s.)

She talks a lot about being afraid of “losing him” or “scaring him off,” and I can’t put my finger on why that bugs me. It seems as if she is undervaluing herself — which she admits she has done in the past with other guys and her family, too. I try to be supportive, but sometimes I get fed up. What’s my role here?

— Best Friend

Dear Friend: Maybe it bugs you because it’s self-negating and melodramatic, and cedes all power to him while she serves as supplicant?

Your role and her role are the same, conveniently: Be yourselves.

For you, that means expressing the fed-up part of you. For her, it’s immersing herself in the idea that, if her natural behavior scares him off, she’ll have done herself the favor of revealing that he isn’t the guy for her.

The latter isn’t something you get to decide for her, obviously, but you can advise it as part of the unveiling of your straight-talking inner self: “Hey, cut that out. He either loves you as is or isn’t the right guy — seriously.” Or: “The person you need to worry about losing is you. The harder you have to work to ‘keep’ him, the worse for you he is.”

Dear Carolyn: I’d like to know your thoughts on siblings splitting the cost of a gift for their parents.

I suggested getting our parents tickets to a show for their anniversary because they love theater. My siblings and I usually split the total among us.

Now, my siblings want me to pay double my share because I am married and have a dual-income household, and they don’t.

That seems unfair. I have three children and, thus, more expenses, but my siblings don’t factor that in. They have no children and live in apartments. I own a home and don’t make huge amounts of money. Am I being unreasonable?

— N.

Dear N.: It doesn’t seem as if you are, although I won’t commit without hearing their sides. Establishing who is reasonable is of little use; we can declare a winner and still not solve your problem — which is that your siblings don’t want to pay equally toward the gift.

The path to a reasonable group gift — which is all you really need here: to get the gift question answered — is to say, “Let’s leave family configuration out of it because that’s a detour down a rabbit hole. Instead, why don’t you each suggest a different gift or figure out the amount you feel comfortable spending?”

If they choose option B, figure out the total and choose a gift within that limit, with a card signed by just the siblings. If your spouse wants in, then you two can throw in an additional card or gift on your own.